Friday, April 30, 2010

Rielle Hunter on Oprah unrepentant about affair with John Edwards

Unrepentant Rielle Hunter, former and possible current mistress of disgraced politician John Edwards, appeared for an interview on the Oprah Winfrey Show on April 29, 2010. Hunter was on Oprah to tell her side of the affair that broke up the marriage of John and Elizabeth Edwards and derailed Edwards' campaign for the Democratic nomination for president. Rielle Hunter had a child, Quinn with John Edwards as a result of the affair.


Reille Hunter was the other woman, key to the breakup of the marriage between John and Elizabeth Edwards. Hunter insisted that you cannot steal a man because people are not property. Hunter stated, 'You can't steal someone else's husband. People are not property.' The 'if she cannot hold on to her husband that is not my responsibility' excuse is the mantra of mistresses everywhere.

When asked how Elizabeth Edwards had learned about the affair, Rielle Hunter said that she had purchased Edwards a cell phone, which was a replica of his official phone, to use exclusively to talk with her. Elizabeth Edwards used the phone and the number connected to Rielle Hunter, who answered 'Hey Baby.'

Hunter alleged, as she has in the past, that Elizabeth Edwards was abusive to her husband and the he was afraid of his wife. Elizabeth Edwards, 60, who has terminal cancer, has separated from her straying husband.

Oprah played portions of a statement John Edwards made on national television in 2008 denying that he had an affair with Rielle Hunter and denying that her baby was his. Hunter told Oprah that after he made that statement on television that he called her and told her that the statement didn't mean anything.

Rielle talked about the scheme that was hatched by Edward aide Andrew Young to claim that Hunter's baby was his, in order to protect Edwards political career. Rielle Hunter insisted that is was Young's idea and not hers, which contradicted statements Young and his wife have made in the past. Hunter said that she almost went along with the scheme because Edwards wanted her to.

Rielle Hunter admitted that everyone had been hurt in the aftermath of the affair, but would not admit to hurting Elizabeth Edwards, saying that she did not know if she hurt Elizabeth Edwards.In direct contradiction to that, Hunter said that she has become a better and more compassionate person. Hunter also said that she does not regret what happened because she has learned so much in the process.

Toward the end of the interview Oprah asked whether she was getting child support and financial support. She first admitted that she was getting child support and when Oprah insisted on clarification she also admitted that she was getting financial support from Edwards, whom she calls Johnny.

Hunter said that she still loves Edwards, still trusts him and that she believes that he still loves her. When asked if she wanted to marry Edwards, Hunter said that she was not sure that she ever wanted to marry again to anybody.

Rielle Hunter refused to answer Oprah's repeated question about the state of her current relationship with the father of her child, Quinn. At the end of the interview, Oprah tried again and Hunter smiled coyly and almost flirtatiously said 'That's private.'

Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Next to the City Sewage?



The Clarion Content is not a staff likely to frown at filth for moral reasons. That aside, there is a certain lowbrow irony in the story that we picked up this week from the blog Bull City Rising. The northern Durham, city owned and operated, sewage treatment plant along with the city Fleet Maintenance Department and the city Solid Waste Department on Camden Avenue could be getting a new neighbor, a strip club. Dirty!

Bull City Rising pointed us to a Durham Herald Sun article. One of the three reporters they have left over there after gutting the staff must have written this story. The paper says Charles M. Peterson Jr. has asked city/county planners to review a site plan for an adult establishment on Camden Avenue. Peterson himself lives in the swanky Governor's Club development south of Chapel Hill. He proposes a 10,000-square-foot building on a 23.4 site. Peterson would need Durham's Board of Adjustment to approve a special use permit.

Durham law says a property associated with an adult establishment has to be at least 1,000 feet from land zoned residential, and at least 1,000 feet from churches, schools, parks, libraries and licensed day cares.

Adult establishments also can be no closer than 2,000 feet to similar businesses, and any building or structure associated with them has to be at least 50 feet away from the property line of an adjacent non-residential use.

In addition to awaiting the special use permit, the site is still being measured for suitability for development.

Saturday, April 24, 2010

Perempuan dan identitasnya.

Ada satu hal menarik yang saya dapatkan ketika menjadi Mc dan mengikuti perayaan Hari Kartini yang dilakukan oleh ibu-ibu Dharma Wanita di kantor hari selasa dan rabu kemarin. Benarkah perempuan akan kehilangan identitasnya ketika sudah menikah?

Bukan, ini bukan pertanyaan sesinis dan sesarkastis yang seperti biasa saya lontarkan. Hanya sedikit perasaan tergelitik saja. Bahwa seorang perempuan akan kehilangan nama sebenarnya ketika telah menikah. Memangnya salah?

Satu moment menarik ketika saya menjadi Mc acara tersebut adalah ketika ingin mempersilahkan Ketua Dharma Wanita Persatuan untuk memberikan kata sambutannya. Sayapun bertanya pada salah satu wanita, nama lengkapnya siapa? Jawaban yang saya terima cukup sederhana namun cukup menohok. Tidak usah menggunakan nama aslinya. Cukup memanggilnya dengan Ny. Xyz saja. What?



Bukankah setiap orang sudah memiliki nama indahnya masing-masing? Walaupun seorang penyair pernah berkata apalah arti sebuah nama, tapi tetap saya menganggap bahwa nama adalah sebuah identitas yang penting. Dalam sebuah nama terdapat doa-doa para orangtua. Pemberian nama pun tidak sembarangan prosesnya. Butuh satu ekor kambing yang dikorbankan untuk perempuan, dan dua ekor untuk lelaki. Dan nama itu seenaknya mau diubah?

Entahlah, apakah memang ini hanya perasaan saya saja atau bukan. Tapi rasanya memang dimana-mana kita temui kenyataan seperti ini. Misalnya ketika ibu-ibu sedang ngumpul –dan bergosip- biasanya mereka memperkenalkan (atau diperkenalkan) seseorang dengan menyebut nama suami terlebih dahulu. Dan ini akhirnya terbawa sampai nanti. Bahwa seorang perempuan akan lebih akrab dipanggil sebagai Nyonya Andi, Ibu Budi dan sebagainya.

Apakah ini menjadi masalah? Entahlah. Karena saya sendiri belum pernah merasakan nama saya dipanggil memakai nama orang lain. Saya sendiri pasti merasa aneh. Apakah memang karena saya sendiri belum berkeluarga? Dan kenapa harus perempuan yang kehilangan identitasnya? Pernahkah seseorang dipanggil sebagai Tuan Rini atau Bapak Wati misalnya?

Belum lagi ketika seorang perempuan sudah memiliki anak. Namanya akan berubah lagi. Menjadi ibunya iqko, bunda Bila dan lain sebagainya. Apakah ini akah menjadi persaingan tersendiri? Diantara mereka yang lajang, yang biasanya masih dipanggil dengan nama asli, melawan mereka yang sudah menikah, (yang dipanggil dengan nama suami) dan mereka yang sudah menikah dan punya anak (yang dipanggil dengan nama anaknya).

Lantas bagaimana nanti ketika dia cerai (mudah-mudahan tidak!)? Ketika dia sudah dikenal dengan nama suaminya, dan sekarang harus jalan sendiri. Dia dipanggil apa?

Rasanya kehidupan pasca menikah pun seorang perempuan harus dikenal dengan nama aslinya. Tidak perduli nama suami atau nama istrinya nanti sebagus apa. Karena ini terkait mengenai identitas pribadi.

Tidak perlu rasanya mengembel-embeli diri dengan panggilan pasangan, karena toh semuanya punya kehidupan masing-masing? Ataukah saya yang salah melihatnya? Karena setelah menikah nantipun saya akan mengenalkan istri saya sebagai dirinya sendiri. Bukan dengan nama saya.

Selamat Hari Kartini untuk seluruh perempuan, tetap pegang identitasmu, siapapun dirimu :)

Friday, April 23, 2010

Not exactly the same in France



The French national soccer team, huge stars in their homeland, are caught up in a sex scandal. But despite their celebrity, they are not facing the same level of scorn and scrutiny as American golfer Tiger Woods.

Le Bleus, as they are known in France, are said to have been frequented a Parisian house of ill-repute. However, prostitution is not illegal in France. At issue is whether one of the prostitutes was under the age of 18. According to the USA Today, the players being questioned are Franck Ribery, Karim Benzema and Sidney Govou. Ribery is the big star of the French team, he signed in 2007 for about $30 million to play for Bayern Munich. They face up to three years in prison and a $60,000 fine.

The young lady in question, Zahia Dehar1, who is now 18, told police she had underage sex with all three players, according to the Daily Telegraph. The English paper reported she was "shocked" the players faced charges and that she told them she was an adult. She also stated that the players had treated her "with utter respect" and should be left alone.

France, it is not exactly the American Bible belt, is it? Compare the sanctimonious speech by the president of Augusta National Golf Club, when Tiger didn't commit a crime, with the attitudes of the Frenchwoman in this case!

1This link is to pictures of Zahia Dehar and is NOT SAFE FOR WORK!

Thursday, April 22, 2010

Remember this guy?

He was a sensation back in the day. It tells you how good advertising (an oxymoron, if there ever was one) is sticky. Who can forget the tagline, from an era when Federal Express was still an up and comer, "When it absolutely, positively has to get there overnight." They said it could not be done. FedEx proved them wrong.

Uoma Don't-a

I'm giving myself 20 minutes to write this while icing my knee after a 3BK game on Wednesday night...

Uoma Donna came and went this weekend, and despite Keith's better organizational efforts, our stacked Phoenix team badly failed to bring home the gold. We essentially never clicked at any point the entire weekend - messiness in the middle of the field throughout - which didn't bother us during a 4-0 Saturday against some reasonably mediocre competition, but then caught up with us and then some in a horrific loss to the Tucson team on Sunday. Boo-urns indeed.

On the plus side, we had fun, even though I got the feeling that Keith was looking for some fun plus winning action this weekend. Our team name was "The Birds and the Bees," so oddly , the women went as bees (for the most part) and the men went as various kinds of birds. I will firmly say that we had by far the best costumes on the weekend, so we can take pride in that if nothing else. Here's the end of Saturday crew in all its motleyness (I think this is Joanne's photo):

birds and the bees

Vince, Luke, Amanda Lindsey, Bonnie, Garret, J-Ro, Genevieve, Dheintime, Katie, Nicole, Monika, BP, Keith, Michelle
Dixon, Nyet, Rob, Joe


College sectionals was that weekend, so between that and the pretty-late-announcement of the tournament, only six teams showed up to play. Add-in that we were playing on half-grass half-dirt all-concrete-hard soccer fields, and you have the makings of an un-fun tourney. Ugh. We played a Tucson team, New Mexico, an older Tucson team, and the other Phoenix team on day one. As mentioned, we won the games, but really clogged a lot and just didn't get anything pretty going. The, um, "typifier" of this angle was Garret, who put up pretty huck after pretty huck... just out of reach, or to a girl who misread it, etc. The tourney was played on small fields with a 2 point, cross-gender rule, which led to a lot of women cutting deep and guys jacking it. Or vice versa. AKA sloppy disc, and plenty of it.

On the mega-awesome side, Genevieve came into town for the tourney. Here's the G, in costume:

genevieve bee costume genevieve bee

We had a fun time - I picked G up from the aeropuerto on Friday evening, and we booked it to Michaels (to acquire bee-costume fixin's, natch) on the way to a great sushi dinner with some frisbee friends in Scottsdale. Drove up to Tucson early Saturday with Dheitime, Katie and Nicole, played all weekend*, then drove back with the same crew, having hilarious adventures both ways (particularly on the ride back, where we learned that JD is a "name that artist" FIEND).

* - I actually drove home with Clint and JD Saturday evening so I could go to the ASU Art Museum Film Festival, which was really great. I should give it a full post treatment, but given my schedule of late, that's unlikely to happen, so... yeah. We saw it with D/C and really enjoyed it. Definitely worth the double tripping to Tucson and back. Sunday morning, I drove up Griesy and Kaetlynn as well as JD, so we had another solid ride there, too.

Sunday evening, after our early return to Phoenix - see below - Genevieve, Beck and I also hit up the Apple Store (to rescue G's broken comp), Fez (for a lovely dinner with Matt Harsh (of Huckaholics fame) and his fiancee Mariah, and some MoJo to cap the day. G also accompanied me to school on Monday, where we worked all morning and then reconvened for a goodbye lunch with Matt and some other CSPO folks.

Back on the tourney front - the one team we didn't play on Saturday, the good Tucson team featuring some Barrio folks, were missing a couple of those Barrio folks on Saturday (notably one J. Grobe), so they ended up in our side of the bracket. So we rolled in lackadaisically on Sunday morning as they were playing a play-in game. Thus began the drama - Keith really wanted to beat this Tucson team, but the majority of the birds/bees were in "goof-around fun tournament mode." Suffice it to say that it was a mismatch of attitudes / directions, and some strife ensued. Whether it was the strife or the terrifically accurate assessment that we were not properly ready to play to start the day, we got absolutely worked by the Tucson dudes - big hucks, Grobe running around, women putting up two pointed on the break side to their guys, you name it. Far cry from our Hoasis glory, and we went down in flames, 13-6 or so. Ouch. The only consolation is that EBay represented Phoenix well in the finals while playing with the New Mexico guys, so Tucson didn't win. Still, we all felt pretty chumpy, especially Keith (who looked downright depressed), and especially those of use who ended up driving 3.5 hours Sunday to play roughly an hour and a half of frisbee.

I had two big highlights on the weekend, both layouts (one on a laser flick huck from garret, one on a almost too far backhand from Rob on Sunday), both resulting in Shylock-ish missing pounds of flesh. Seriously, my arms are ripped up, and I have an apple-sized strawberry on my right hip. And somewhere in there I inverted laid out for a deflected pass and ripped my back up. Genevieve compared me to an assault victim of sorts - it was pretty bad. And is pretty bad, as I've reopened things Tuesday and Wednesday night since. Anyhoo, I otherwise played okay on the weekend, scoring some goals and such, but really struggling with some hammers and backhand hcuks. I even turfed a backhand to Genevieve, and I haven't turfed a backhand like that since roughly 2003. No, not really, but it is a rarity.

So, to recap - few teams, lackluster competition, an uber-grumpy captain, and Nyet-eating fields. And we never clicked all weekend, meaning our stacked roster went 4-1 without ever feeling totally great about things. And I didn't feel great about my personal play, other than a couple of layouts which made it such that I couldn't sleep for the next few days. So, seriously, I really enjoyed playing with G and everybody, but truth be told, this was a crappy tournament. Good thing the Phoenix peeps were so fun, as I am not really interested in returning next year if this is gonna be the scene.

Nice effort Keith - sorry we couldn't pull it out for ya - and great to see the G per usual. I'll leave you with the funniest exchange, imho, of the weekend.

Keith: This sucked. I could have spent the weekend doing something much more worthwhile.
Genevieve: Um, like cleaning toilets?
Keith: No, hanging out with you. I'm very negative lately, and I could use your positivity.
[Conversation about the most positive person we know ensues. Keith continues to insist that it's Genevieve]
Justin Griesy: But what about us, man? We're not positive enough to hang out with?
Nyet: Yeah, what about us? Come on, Griesy, let's go back to Negativeland.
Griesy: Yeah, Keith doesn't even want us around. Good thing we've got Negativeland.
Nyet: Hey, I like evil, and death, and pestilence.
Griesy [not missing a beat]: I think fire's pretty great.

Anyhoo, yeah, not a great tourney, but a good time, nonetheless. I hope Tucson gets it together for next year - fields are pretty routinely bad in April, but it seems there has to be a better-than-dirt option. Oh, and here's some photographic proof - Nyet v. Big Nate in the fourth game on Saturday. That's Garret in the background. I'm pretty sure this was immediately before a blade forehand to JD for a score. I'm also pretty sure that the dirt on my back indicates that this was after one of the "assault victim" layouts. So there ya have it - Uoma Don't-a 2010, a good one for the hanging and the costumed tomfoolery but not for the disc:

nyetvnate

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

3BK - Pool Play - Game One

3BK looked pretty sharp with a very efficient 40 minute 13-3 win over FIGJAM. Very few turns, LOTS of aggressive D, and Keith et al had trouble getting it going, even with some switcheroo guy on girl D on Lindsey. Nothing much else to say - good teamwide effort from the blue peeps. The count:

1,2,3-0; 3-1; 4-1; 4-2; 5,6,7-2; 8,9-2; 9-3; 10,11,12,13-3.

I started the game with a layout D on their goal-line, and threw a flick to Lindsey, and it was pretty much on from there. Definite personal highlight was a siiiiick layout trailing edge catch on a lasery huck from Al (that oddly elicited zero response from the crowd), and I otherwise played well, with D's and breakmarks and hucks and the usual. My knee held up okay, too, though the aforementioned layout reopened my side. Ouch. On the evil front, I was overly amped for this game and need to watch it by all accounts, so I'll try to rein it in a bit for the weekend. Kinder, gentler Nyet takes some knockout blows from the hatestick come playoff time, so I'll try to correct that in the never-ending war to control the aggro tendencies on the field. Not really worth talking about further than that, because if people aren't going to talk to me directly, I hardly owe them anything other than a sincere effort to as an underachiever please try harder.

Good to see the 3BK in sync, good to get solid all around play, and really nice to head into the weekend on the plus side. We've got a couple of tough Wednesday opponents in Tim Streit's team and Cisco's team, so should be exciting. Sorry for the lackluster review, but this game and all its surrounding hoopla deserve it. Here's to a more exciting weekend.

Unintended Consequences



The law of unintended consequences is a funny one. We bet this was one of the unknown unknowns even Donald Rumsfeld did not consider. The havoc wreaked on Iraq in recent years have pushed archaeologists to begin excavations in relatively safer and more tranquil Syria.

United States and Syrian excavators have uncovered a huge panoply of artifacts from what must have been a robust pre-urban settlement on the upper Euphrates River at a site known as Tell Zeidan. The New York Times reports, "Zeidan should reveal insights into life in a time called the Ubaid period, 5500 to 4000 B.C. In those poorly studied centuries, irrigation agriculture became widespread, long-distance trade grew in influence socially and economically, powerful political leaders came to the fore."

Archaeologists caught a break because apparently subsequent civilizations and generations did not build on the site. The potential sounds limitless. The Times quotes, Guillermo Algaze, an anthropologist at the University of California, San Diego, "[Zeidan] has the potential to revolutionize current interpretations of how civilization in the Near East came about."

Read the whole article here.

Durham Food Culture



The Clarion Content and many of our local readers know this already, but Durham's food culture is amazing. Now the New York Times knows too. In a write-up published today, The Times interviews, among others, friend of the Clarion Content, Matt Beason about the restaurant he manages, Six Plates. Matt notes the veritable explosion of good restaurants in Durham in the last few years. The Times writer also talked to Amy Tornquist the owner of Watts Grocery. Note too that there was no mention of the wildly overrated and overpriced newcomer to downtown, Revolution.

An excerpt from the article follows.

"There are still plenty of good places for a barbecue plate, excellent French bistros like Vin Rouge and Rue Cler, and some white-tablecloth dining rooms, both traditional and modern.

But the most intriguing cooks here have a few things in common: an understanding of how to give a menu a sense of place; a true love of pork and greens in all their forms; and a lack of interest in linens and glassware...

The vast brick buildings still roll through the city center, emblazoned with ads for Lucky Strike and Bull Durham cigarettes. They are being repurposed as art studios, biotechnology laboratories and radio stations.

More important for food lovers, hundreds of outlying acres of rich Piedmont soil have “transitioned” from tobacco, and now sprout peas, strawberries, fennel, artichokes and lettuce. Animals also thrive in the gentle climate, giving chefs access to local milk, cheese, eggs, pigs, chickens, quail, lambs and rabbits."

The New York Times is not the first place to recognize the Durham food culture for the gem it is. In 2007 Gourmet magazine wrote up our area as one of the best in the country for Mexican food.

Monday, April 19, 2010

Kisah si perenang amatiran (bagian 1)

Entah sudah berapa kali postingan mengenai saya yang berusaha menjadi sehat ada di blog ini. Mulai dari resolusi hidup sehat, niat untuk berolahraga, dan semuanya itu gagal! Tidak ada yang berhasil. Sampai angka timbangan sudah sampai ke angka 99++ dengan segala konsekuensinya.

Tapi kenyataan itu bertambah menyeramkan ketika saya masuk di kantor yang baru. Kenapa? Disini justru saya kebanyakan duduk. Bisa dari jam 8 pagi sampai jam 4 sore. Belum lagi ditambah asupan makanan berlemak –kenapa semua makanan enak itu selalu membawa dosa?- di tiap rapat atau sesi makan gratis lainnya. Mau mati muda?

Saya pikir tidak. Kiprahku masih panjang. Masih banyak hal yang ingin saya lihat dan ingin saya lakukan. Tapi bagaimana caranya kalau gaya hidup seperti itu? Olahraga cuma seminggu sekali, sementara asupan racun bisa berlangsung tiap hari. Ini harus dihentikan!

Akhirnya setelah memikirkan berbagai macam alternatif olahraga, akhirnya saya memutuskan untuk melakukannya. Fitness? Tidak. Saya masih parno akan kemungkinan badan yang semakin melar kalau fitness tersebut tidak berkelanjutan. Bersepeda? Duit saya belum cukup buat membeli sepeda yang rasanya menjadi semakin mahal. Lari? Huff! Banyakan capeknya. Lagian efek cedera menjadi terlalu besar karena tungkai yang kecil belum mampu menopang badan yang segede-gede gaban. Jadi?



Renang! Akhirnya saya memilih jurus ini untuk sedikit mengeraskan dan menghilangkan gumpalan lemak di tubuh. Ada ketakutan yang menghantui sebenarnya, saya belum bisa terlalu berenang. Itupun kalau ke kolam atau ke pantai, banyakan main airnya daripada berenang. Sebentar apa yang dikatakan orang? Kalau saya tenggelam?

Pertanyaannya lagi, saya mau berenang dimana? Celana renangnya mau bagaimana? Beli? Dimana? Berapa harganya? Hahhaha. Kok kayaknya ribet banget yah! Tapi berhubung niat yang sudah membulat, maka saya pun memulai perjuangan saya sebagai perenang amatiran.

Yang pertama dilakukan adalah berburu celana renang! Dimana saya bisa mendapatkan celana renang yang cocok untuk beruang? Saya sempat mengikuti saran seorang teman di kantor, katanya cari di Barata. Sebuah toko pakaian di daerah pantai Losari. Beberapa kali niat ini selalu gagal, tapi begitu kesampaian ternyata hasilnya pun tidak sesuai dugaan. Pas saya menanyakan celana renang yang dimaksud, mbak-mbak penjaganya cuma bilang,

“maaf pak. Tidak ada ukuran untuk bapak”


Wtf! Apalagi penjaga toko itu mengatakannya tanpa merasa bersalah sedikitpun! Akhirnya saya bingung lagi, mau cari dimana? Lokasi kedua : matahari! Disini baru saya mendaptkan yang sesuai, yah Cuma satu masalahnya. Harganya ngajakin miskin banget! 189. 000 rupiah. Huhuhuhu. Mau makan apa saya selama sisa sebulan ini? Tapi yasudlah. Daripada besok yang kenapa-kenapa, akhirnya celana ini terbeli juga.

Rencana kedua adalah hunting kolam renang. Dimana? Kapan? Bagaimana? Dari sekian banyak kolam yang ada di Makassar, hanya ada ebberapa tempat yang rekomendasi mengenai kebersihannya. Untuk waktu sih, sepertinya tidak ada waktu lain selain sore hari. Kolam Mattoangin? Kejauhan dari kantor, belum dapat macetnya selama perjalanan. Pasti sampai disitu kolamnya sudah tutup. Unhas? Kayak tidak tahu saya kolam renangnya diisi pakai air dari mana. Dari danau unhas cint! Kolam hotel? Nggak tahu harganya berapa, pasti lebih ngajakin miskin banget lagi. Dan akhirnya pilihannya jatuh ke padepokan Tirta Lontara. Murah, meriah, dekat dari kantor.

Semua persiapan sudah siap, jadi tunggu apa lagi?

Friday, April 16, 2010

Proof of a Friday A.M. Commute

Took the canal into work this morning. It's a bit of a hairy ride as long portions of it were unpaved. Took roughly 50 minutes door to door, which is not terrible; my car commute is fifteen minutes of driving plus a fifteen minute walk plus whatever traffic I run into. Still, I would definitely need to shower if I were to ride here over the summer, and that would involve additionally walking to the gym, showering and walking back. So turning my thirty minute commute into an hour and twenty minute chore probably isn't a realistic option, all things told. We'll see if Frank can convince me otherwise.

Good weekend ahead - g arrives tonight, and the knee feels okay, probably 75%, which is good enough to play slow handler. I'll keep you updated.

Sent from my iPhone

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

3BK-9

Bing Bing Bing Kablowski rounded out the season with a 15-10 win over a team that didn't even know the meaning of its own name, Black Smoke Monster*. That puts us at 6-3 with a +29 point differential and a 6-1 in-conference record, good for the 3rd seed in our pool. Our pool play opponents will be the Monday night 2 seed (Cisco's "Your Dad") and 7 seed (Tim's SupercalaHuckalicious-withD-alaPoaches) and Wednesday night's 6 seed (FIGJAM), setting up the predicted epic battle between the Wednesday acronym teams, now with Keith. Exciting times ahead.

* - The Cheer:

Some people like Beethoven
Some people like Bach
There's one thing we know
You're not the real John Locke!

The Response:

[Crickets]

I'll spare Genevieve the suspense and reveal that I tested the knee out tonight, and while I was not at 100%, it got better as I played and overall performed pretty well. So I *should* be good to go for this weekend, though 1, I'll know better after I see whether it flares up again after tonight, and 2, playing a whole tourney is a whole lot different than playing for an hour and a half, so I'll need to be careful. I'm surprised that it went so well tonight; it felt crappy earlier today, but I realized that really, the times it has been feeling the worst have been after I have been sitting still for a long time. So I think there is still fluid in the joint, but when I work the knee, it acts like a pump and gets at least some of it out of there = I feel much better. So I'm going to continue to ice it like crazy, but I'll add in some quad pumps and exercises throughout the day as well as some low resistance bike riding at the gym the next couple of days to keep the fluid out as much as possible. So, all systems are tentatively go for now, with the caveat that if I get the slightest bit uncomfortable this weekend, I will shut down the machine. So G, say YAY!

Back to the game - Black Smoke featured Pat, Jim, Jose, Volo, Steve, Kaysie, Lexi, Matt, Ted, Kelly, and some other people (most of whom, interestingly, did not show up, leaving them with pretty much all-experienced lines). They came out firing, but then things kicked into gear... here's the line score:

0-1,2,3; 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8-3; 8-4; 9-4; 9-5,6; 10-6; 10-7; 11-7; 11-8; 12,13,14-8; 14-9,10; 15-10

Yep - after starting things down 0-3, we went on an 8-0 run, coasted for a bit, then went on a 3 point run (including some zone shreddage) toward the end that effectively put the game away. We had a very full team there, so it was quite nice to see everyone really running, making hard cuts and D'ing well. They had several experienced players who did some good poachy things against us, so I did a lot more cutting than usual and made them pay. I caught 7 and threw 4 this week, a pretty much direct reversal of last week - again too much, which could hurt us come pool play time as I will have to dial it back for a full day of disc, but they were being a little veteran crafty and the opps were there, so I took them. Some nice jumping catches and a layout grab of a too far out Lindsey backhand were some highlights, as well as a couple of full-fielders to Lindsey and Matt. Lindsey abused their women pretty well, so not only did they try a Z against us, but they put Ted on her at one point - I was definitely tempted to put it to her anyways and see what would happen, but we solved the "switcheroo" defense fairly easily. Beck was back out there tonight - she's still feelinga bit sore, but was able to run around the field much better for the first time in a few weeks. So the Jones household is almost back to full strength.

Anyhoo, we got some good running from our whole team, took some nice deep shots, worked it well against the Z, and people filled in nicely when the hucks weren't there. Pretty solid effort all-around - not too many bad turns I can remember, just some drops (and one stupid too-weak hammer from me that got D'ed by Pat - I had that and a punt-huck that just sailed a little too wide, but otherwise was pretty well feeling it). Pretty good way to roll into the playoffs, but per usual, we shall see.

I definitely was a little aggro tonight, though in a contained fashion - didn't yell at anyone or anything, but definitely danced with the hatestick a little bit. I'll chill that out for this weekend, but it definitely felt good to get revved and out there running for the first time in a week instead of sitting on the couch or sidelines. Speaking of, I've got ice applied for the third time tonight, so hopefully things will hold together.

Sorry if this was a bit of a boring writeup; we just played a nice, energetic game, and I brought it a little bit. Uoma Donna this weekend should be super-exciting; I'll try to hold it together - at least for some O points...

Sunday, April 11, 2010

AR: White Crosses


Against Me! - White Crosses (2010)

Dove Valley Jon left the new Against Me! album at the house after our recent Austin adventure and requested a review. I didn't question the appearance of this yet-to-be-released album at my house, just uploaded it to my iTunes and tucked the CD in a spare jewel case for the next day's ride to school. Against Me!'s major label debut, New Wave, made quite a splash even outside the band's root punk circles - Spin called it 2007's album of the year - so I was marginally familiar with the band, having picked up that disc as a typical end-of-year-list junkie. The review of that one, as well as the review of their seminal indie label hit, Against Me! is Reinventing Axl Rose, will have to wait for another day. For now, I'll just try to relate the archetypal pop punk experience of rolling down the 202, facing brilliant sunshine and listening to its sister album, the unabashedly, immediate, fist-raising White Crosses.

The album-opening title track encapsulates pretty much everything that's glorious and limited about the album as a whole. "White Crosses" roars in with an utterly unoriginal drumbeat drive, chimes in with a familiar single note rumbling bassline and boasts the most predictable, sunshiney lead guitar melody you've ever heard. The snarl-shouted lyrics sit right in their place, and the chorus kicks in with that appropriate youthful frustration. There's something painfully cliche about the whole bit, yet it's so uncompromisingly earnest that the heart-on-sleeve yearning beats out whatever "PLAYED!" sentiments would escape my lips. It's, in other words, exquisitely professional and powerfully catchy, and despite my best hipster cynical intentions, I can't help but pump my fist along. This is epitomized pop punk in a seemingly pure sense; the album screams on from here (the next track, for Hashem's sake, is "I Was A Teenage Anarchist") in perfect pitch frustration, angst and borrowed nostalgia for the unremembered late '70s (or maybe 1994's Dookie?). Okay, that's a cheap joke, and I don't mean to ridicule this AT ALL, because it really does work. But when track two has a chorus that screams "do you remember / when you were young and you wanted to set the world on fire?." and the next track just flatly emotes "we used to get high together" and backs "Woooooaaaaahhhh-o-o-oh" with "my name tattooed into your skin" over and over, there's something so unfathomably unironic going on that it causes the grand us-with-awareness to get a little uncomfortable. If you need an exhibit 1A, check out "Because of the Shame" at the 2:40 guitar drop-out, drums and tambourine (and are those acoustic boom chords I hear?) section. I defy you to call that original, and yet these guys mean it, mean it so.

Listening to this album evokes the experience of a multifaceted mash-up: there are *tons* of elements of Green Day (check out the flange of "Suffocation" or the faux Brit-punk accent of "Ache With Me"), U2 (the Joshua Tree vibe of "Bamboo Bones," for one), Sex Pistols derivation (the paint-by-numbers "Rapid Decompression"), and a general '80s John Hughes soundtrack appropriateness (wow, "We're Breaking Up"). That's not to say that the songwriting and singing don't place their stamp on all of these tunes, but at least part of the hook relies heavily on poking in and around your cultural mindgeist's subconscious knowledge of pop that has gone before. I hate to review a band by saying "they sound like X mixed with Y," but I hope that's not what I'm doing here - one, I'm acknowledging that they're something more than the mix, and 2, I'd lose my pop music awareness license if I didn't note the completely obvious aped tendencies / influences they sport. (I haven't even mentioned that the endeavor carries a more than a little The Hold Steady baggage, too). Still, if you're keeping score, that's unoriginal sentiments and unoriginal sounds. Crappy review, eh?

No, homes. However they do it, they manage to convince you that this is a tad more than the world's most sincere bar band, and this album that self-consciously breaks no new ground whatsoever deserves multiple spins. For one, it sounds fantastic - Butch Vig (he of Nirvana, Pumpkins, etc. fame) produced it, and part of the reason that everything seems so glaringly in its right place is that it is. For another, it's the ineffable sense that despite the fact that they wear their influences on their sleeves just as plainly as their trite nostalgic teenaged emotions, they unfailingly execute it to the nth degree. I get all the intended chiils, all the tears come to eye on the right planned song gearshifts. What can I say beyond "they pulled it off?"

It also doesn't hurt that there's a genuine leftfield earcatcher on here. "Ache With Me" is effectively a punk-country song, and though there's enough Billie Joe, Mike and Tré to go around, it's still a nice departure from the typical. Again, it's somewhat spot-on sad in a way that makes your cynical side cringe while your believing side nods. But whatever cheese asterisk is required, it's a nice slow stomping tear-jerker.

That pretty much does it - in 36 minutes, Against Me! delivers a uniformly good if somewhat predictable set of songs, all of which will get you humming along even though you realize all the while that you're being had. It's a good if not great album, and while I get the feeling that I'm not exactly the target audience here, the crowd that's looking for some speakers of classic rebellious sentiment to rally behind has a professional set of pulpit speakers behind whom to stand. This one's definitely sticking in the rotation.

Status: Recommended (solid)
Nyet's Fave: "Ache With Me"

The Aftermath / The State of Nyet

As mentioned, the hits just keep on coming. Beck had Thursday off, so after returning the mountain of papers that Jenny and I graded (in SA / Austin and over the past week) to the class that afternoon, I met her at SMOCA so she, too, could enjoy the Close portraits and the design-in-music exhibit. This was the day after the Jon Spencer Knee Explosion, so I couldn't really walk around the museum very well, but I enjoyed the second time just as much as the first. Home for some delicious (and light) codfish and broccoli dinner, and we got ready to get back to the grind on Friday.

Elaine (Beck's 5th year college roomie) and her new husband Jamie met us with D/C at the Biltmore's showing of Dr. No, the original James Bond movie. Interesting to see both what passed for special effects and good dialog back in 1962 (not to mention the exquisite old school sexism). Enjoyable enough, especially over Red Devil and followed by a stupidly colossal MoJo chocolate mocha mint concoction. After another working day, we met the same crew (plus E/J's friends Mike and Anna) at Barrio Cafe, a neighborhood fancy Mexican place that we've been meaning to try since we got here. Good if stupidly expensive, Barrio at least gave us a good environment to wait an hour-plus to be seated and enjoy some quality grub. The plan is to have Elaine and Jamie over for burgers tonight, too.

And lest you think that the train of family / friends is over, co-captain Genevieve is going to be in town this coming weekend. Yay! We're headed down to Tucson to play in Uoma Donna, a fun co-ed Ulty tourney that includes general silliness as well as good Ultimate (as well as a "two point for cross-gender hucks from behind the half field line" rule, which always makes for hilarity). Getting Genevieve to fly in and forming a siiiiick team has been a plan in the works for a few months now, so my general level of pissedness at potentially driving down and sitting on the sidelines is extraordinary. I've probably ranted about it enough, but the timing of this sucks, and it supersucks that after all the disciplined eating at working out and general effort at preventing this from happening, here I am again with a busted knee from trying to be a club Ultimate player. I'll spare you more because I'd hate for this to become VhinBallad - you know, whatevs. I'll have fun with G et al - my plan is to rest / ice and try to get the swelling down by Wednesday, see how it takes to a league game, and then evaluate whether I think it'll stand up to a full weekend after that. I'm going to try to make a doc's appt. in there, too, because as my dad points out, knee effusion is decidedly un-normal (even though I think I've got subclinical effusion *all-the-time*, so this may just really be a flare-up-plus). I'm trying to stay upbeat about it, but the usual frustration is settling in nicely today. D'oh.

Otherwise, I am suffering the rush of the late semester. Not worth going into details, but there's enough work to do that I should probably stop blogging now. Actually, it's not terrible; just a couple big assignments and all the TAing left to be done, and hopefulyl I'll pull it off. I'm not going to worry.

Alright, to that end, here we go. This post feels boring; sorry for that. Time to grab some food and get back to work. Here we go (incidentally, Alex O. pressed all game long and didn't score. Ah, well).

Houseguestapalooza MMX (Part VI - Bonus Houseguestapalooza!)

Parting is such sweet sorrow, which makes it nice that after sending the iPFam off on Tuesday, we would see them but a few short days later... in Texas! I collected a stack of 85 four page essays from the undergrads on Thursday and packed them up along with the usual accessories to make a trip down to San Antonio and Austin for the weekend. Giant Panda Guerrilla Dub Squad was playing a show with G. Love and Special Sauce at the legendary (I think, but what isn't "legendary?") rock club Antone's in Austin on Saturday night, so Beck and I flew down to SA Friday for a nice weekend with the recently seen fam and the rest of the SA crew.

Got in to SA around 1 pm and hung out for the afternoon; tried to teach Dad the art of playlist composition in iTunes until Aaron got there around 2:30. Aaron, Dad and I headed up to Clark to toss ye olde frisbee around, which was a tonne of funne*. Aaron has crazy disc golf throws, so it was funny seeing our different approaches / angles of launching the disc. We came back to clean up and hang around the house a bit more with Deb and Mom, and then the iPfam pulled into town. With the set complete, we jumped in cars and took the entire crew - Pat, Ron, Grandpa, iPJ, iPMM, Dad, Mom, Deb, Aaron, Beck and Nyet - to the Alamo Cafe for some old time greasy food. We ate dinner and then proceeded to "camp," as Aaron put it, a behavior I'm sure made us lots of friends at the Cafer. Good meal and good times - the next day would be a busy one with all kinds of travel and coordination, so we went home, watched part of the Spurs game and then fell asleep. (Or, you know, graded more papers. THEME!). The iPFam headed on to Austin to meet up with the band and make sure they got into their hotels alright and were rewarded with a smelly Marriott and a band that never showed up for their troubles (they changed hotels, and the band would show up at about 3 the next afternoon. Sheesh, the GPGDS life).

* - Though in retrospect - especially given the balloon job my knee has done this week - running around without all of my braces was perhaps not the smartest thing I've ever done. Sigh...

Got up early Saturday morning at roughly 6 aka 4 Sunny Azz time to get some grading done. Beck and I had been DYING for some Chuy's - real style, Texas Chuy's, not the facsimiles we have here in Phoenix - so we headed out of SA at about 10:45 to go to Barton Springs Road in Austin for some more Tex Mex delight. Aaron made the trek with us separately in his truck, the iPFam met us at the restaurant, and we also hooked up with Rice bud Jason and his relatively new wife Phoenix. Had a delicious meal, complete with left over burrito, and a fun time catching up with my old college roomie. Somewhere in there we got a call from Jamie; he said the band was in Houston, which was a tad bizarre given they had been in Oklahoma the previous night. Lesson learned? Between this and the iP "Tulsa = Tucson" MM, we should never trust an iP with directions. Seems the band is in need of an GP(GD)S.

Back to the tale - we bid Jason/Phoenix adieu and headed into the gorgeous Austin day. Nyetfam plus Deb was originally planning to meet us up at Aaron's place in north Austin, and Kristin (Aaron's SLF) was going to meet us up there as well. But given that the show that evening was in south Austin and we were already there, we threw a wrench in the plans. Aaron and I went for a too-brief trip to Waterloo Records (for my first honest-to-life bin scouring record store experience in quite some time) - I picked up the new Sierra Leone's Refugee All-Stars album, Rise and Shine, while Aaron picked out a Bela Fleck album and a Dodos album - while Beck and iPFam headed to Zilker Park. Turned out everyone and their dog was headed there, too, on account of the lovely Saturday afternoon, so the iPFam redrew the plans. We called the Nyetfam and coordinated a meeting at the Umlauf Sculpture Garden, requiring all of us to battle the nutty Austjam. Eventually everyone got there, and we enjoyed some intriguing bronze sculptures in a shady spot. Evidence!

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That's St. Francis of Assisi (1,1); Icarus (1,2 & 1,3); Gabriel (Michael?) & Lucifer (1,5 & 2,1 & 2,3); a stunning pieta (2,2 & 2,4); and a weird, distorted image of the Beck (2,5). And a nice romantic pond statue in full size.


Idyllic little place, even if the moisture in the air and the gnats quickly reminded me why I like my new home's arid ambiance. Hung out there for a bit, then the iPFam, Beck and I went back to the iPHotel to meet up with Jamie while the Sr. Joneses went up to Aaron's with the plan to reconvene in a few hours for dinner.

Great to see Jamie; he's doing very well and feeling much happier since the band rearranged its lineup not too long ago. They've been touring with G Love & Special Sauce, a '90s alterna jazz-blues-rap band of sorts that specializes in a sort of slacker frat vibe (their most famous song is Baby's Got Sauce," followed by "I Like Cold Beverages") that is legitimately known by anyone anywhere near my age group and into such things. Jamie regaled us with great behind-the-scene tales of band drama and personalities, of how Matt McHugh cornered G Love and got him to agree to let Matt use BGS for the soundtrack of a comedy short. Hilarious stuff, and quite nice to see a happy / healthy GPGDS bassist / (lead?) singer.

We combined our iPhones into some sort of Captain Planet monstrosity to locate a nearby sushi restaurant and grabbed some delicious sushi appetizers. Or allegedly delicious; I cannot pretend to know such things. I did, however, get my requisite Ziegenbock! Huzzah! Left there to meet the entire clan (all the aforementioned plus Paige!) at the Moonshine Cafe where we had some excellent down home food (I grabbed bbq chicken and red beans and rice). Beck easily won the award for innovative dinner choice as she got the biggest piece of apple pie a la mode I have ever seen (that's Aaron's gargantuan 6'5" person hand for reference):

DSCF6291

Ay caramba! Good times and good dinner (part two); we walked a few blocks from there to Antone's and got ready for the show. GPGDS took the stage a little early (9:20?) and TORE IT UP. I was too stupid to write down a setlist, but they threw down a number of great new tunes as well as some hot versions of classics. "Seasons Change > Jam > On the Moon" was particularly shwank, and I finally got to hear a personal favorite, "45," live. The catalog has changed a little bit in the absence of Matt / Rachel - some "Matt tunes" are no longer in the repertoire, and the melodica tunes are no more, either. (Beck finds this a-okay, as she thought the meolidica killed all energy, and one song in particular that she is downright venomous against, "Pollen Song," appears to have been stricken from the record for good). (Btw, if you're interested in hearing the new quartet's sound, check a show at archive.org here, but trust that this is not entirely representative of the type of mixing that the band likes to employ on their live recordings). It was also shwank to see Aaron, the now sole keyboardist, able to really show his chops. He played two to three sets of keys at once at times, pulling off some serious wizardry. Two of the Special Sauce crew made appearances, too - Timo, the Sauce bassist, played a wicked "Summertime"-derived sax solo, and the Sauce keyboardist jumped in for some blistering solos, too. Fiery, energetic set that seemed to grab the crowd (Jamie gave it a 6 or 7 out of 10 in terms of the energy they had experienced on tour), and my parents got an anniversary shoutout taboot. Well worth the trek. I got some decent pics in the low light of Antone's - feel free to check out the set on flickr, but here are a few solid entries:

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We stuck around a bit to watch G Love et al - they're exceptionally talented and delivered a solid set, but the entire shtick is a little samey and played at this point. Don't get me wrong; highly entertaining and silky slick, but gimmicks like the "smoke the joint from the guy in the front row during the song about weed" has got to be old by this point, no? Still, fun and catchy enough to entice Beck to buy a shirt (and later a CD on iTunes). We headed out a little before midnight and after a bit of an adventure taking Paige back to her car, we made it back to Aaron's by 1.

Left Aaron's early the next morning (he and Kristin were headed to her family's for Easter dealings) to meet the iPFam and the remainder of the band for a hotel brunch. Said goodbye for real to everybody - Houseguestapalooza iPEdition finally seeing its end - and drove back to SA. Had a laid back afternoon at the homestead, watching the Spurs and hanging a bit with Pat and Grandpa before eating some burgers and heading on our way. We got back to Phoenix around 8 and I jumped into super-work mode while Beck grabbed us some small MoJo snacks to cap our nice weekend.

And *that* was actually the end to Houseguestapalooza. Phew. Another good March / early April in Sunny Azz, but it was nice to have things settle down somewhat to normal, too. Of course, Rice friends Jamie and Elaine are in town this weekend, so...

Sunday Morning / What if Bobby didn't fly?

Taking a break from school reading to sip on an iced coffee (from, appropriately enough, DD) and catch a Bruins / Caps game. Alexander Ovechkin has 50 goals and just got caught by Steven Stamkos, a 20 year old from the Tampa Bay Lightning (he's incidentally one of the three youngest players to hit that mark, beaten by only Jimmy Carson and some dude named Gretzky). So this should be an exciting afternoon as they try to get #8 the Rocket Richard Award. I'll spend it with legs propped up and iced.

But really why I'm posting is this, a cool little commercial for the upcoming Stanley Cup playoffs that just played. Enjoy:


Saturday, April 10, 2010

Houseguestapalooza MMX (Part V)

The Thursday that the iPFam returned to the Jones abode, the 25th, was an epic date in the grand scheme of The Ballad. Beck's and my T-Mobile contracts were running out, and we had a few Christmas gift certificates to the Apple Store burning holes in our pockets. We had been T-Mobile customers since we had gotten cell phones - way back in '01 or '02 or somethings - so about a month ago, we tried to do the reasonable thing and holds our friends at the T hostage. The argument was something along the lines of, "Well, we basically have free iPhones waiting for us, so you should make it worth our while to stay with T-Mobile by giving us free equivalent phones. Basically, we either get new phones and renew contracts with you guys - and at, say $100+ bucks per month for the next two years, that's $2400 you'd be making - or you hassle us over what are surely in reality $10 free phones, we leave, and you get $0." Seemed like a totally reasonable threat / offer to us. Of course, our friends at T-Mobile were a bunch of jerks and refused to even talk to us about it, and instead offered "free shipping on the phones," an offer their website made anyways. When we asked if we could just leave now and call it a T-day, they threatened us with $200 fines EACH for early terminating the contracts early*. Even though the contracts had a whopping $90 left on them. What the hell - we decided to stick it out and wait until the end of the contract.

* - Lawyer-to-be friend Mike NTPB pointed out that invariably, these phone companies have to make small changes to your contract over the two year period - tax rate changes, fine print type stuff. Those, though, constitute "material changes" to the contract, and according to Miguel, effectively make it a new contract that you didn't *really* sign. Apparently if you stick to that party line, you can successfully dodge those fees. So there ya go.

Beck called T-Mobile back on Wednesday the 24th to make the offer again. Now they were much happier / more scared to talk and offered us the phones, but too late, T-fools! Beck was about to get the iPhones when T-Mobile told her that our contract was still live, so if we tried to change our phone numbers over, we would still be charged the $200 each. ARGH! So Beck said fine, she would do it Friday. Ah, but that would mean our month-to-month plan on T-Mobile would have automatically renewed, so we would owe them for another month of service. Eh? Basically, we had to make the change over to the iPhones and AT&T at the precise minute window or T-Mobile was going to try to screw us. And there was something about virgin's blood and the moon being at the correct degree above the horizon, too. Or something. Basically, this all meant that I had to run to the Apple Store on Thursday, with iPFam on the horizon, to get our phone situation all figured out.

And even that simple act - walking into the store, knowing exactly what I wanted and asking for it, turned into an ordeal with those friggin' koolaid consuming automaton jackasses aka the Apple Store Geniuses. I even told them directly that they could drop the act with me, but this didn't help as apparently their prime directives are just too powerful. So annoying; I just wanted to grab them by their big fat heads and say "LOOK, MAN, NOTHING IS THIS EXCITING,OKAY?!!?!?!" On top of the bizarre and thoroughly inauthentic human interactions, they didn't know how to preserve my number for the phones since I use an out of state area code. The solution was to to have me buy all the iParaphernalia at the Apple Store, assign me random numbers with AT&T with Phoenix area codes, and then trek over to the AT&T store where they would know what to do. Fine, whatever. Done and done (and oh yeah, I celebrated my purchase with a fruity MoJo concoction), so I headed over to AT&T ... where they told me the magic solution was to call a 1-800 number and do it myself. Fantastic. Some two hours later, it was all figured out, and I had me an iPhone, and one for the Beck, taboot!

And yeah, it's completely changed our lives. We don't ask questions any more, we answer them with the brain in our pocket. It's pretty amazing, and I haven't even spent a dime on an app yet. Maybe a topic for another post - I'm not even sure how excited I am about writing the experiential shift that comes with ownership of an iPhone, let alone you reading it - but suffice it, I've joined the masses and now "get it." I definitely achieved a certain sense of iZen while walking to class the other day, listening to Kind of Blue and checking my e-mail in the glorious sunshine. Good times.

More importantly, it's almost as a document has come out that I am secretly Ashkenazi, and now the iPMM and I can finally understand one another. Just kidding - but it was strangely appropriate that the we had the iPJ himself and his trusty, even more addicted partner to teach us in our formative iPhone days. This may seem trivial, but the amount of conversation that was dominated with talk of apps and such was astounding over this phase of Houseguestapalooza. And yes, rightfully so; they're incredible devices that alter your interface with the world. Sometimes, sough cough, make your interface with the world entirely a handheld device. I am terrified of what facebook + iPhone will do to the Beck, but so far so good. Anyways, that's probably enough about that. Just note that we are now officially an iPFam Jr. and are likely to suffer and suffer you all that entails. (Also note that AT&T is hexta-expensive, and we had to give up our cable subscription - that we weren't really using anyways - to make things balance out. We're also on the lowest minutes plan, so only call us on nights and weekends and such, unless you're a fellow AT&T subscriber and all that).

Wow, long intro - the iPFam got in late that Thursday night such that I had already eaten. Friday had fun in store - I got some work done early and headed out at 10 to watch my last Cubs game of the spring. Woohoo! Greg and Meghan had given me a gift certificate to StubHub, so I found some remarkably cheap (very near face) tix directly behind home plate for the Cubs Friday game against the A's. I took my buddy Jim from Sprawl, a fellow tortured Cubs fan soul, and we enjoyed a nicely pitched game by Carlos Z (who won today, incidentally, to make up for his horrific opening day start). Great fun - here was the vantage:

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Marmol imploded in the 8th or so in this one, so the Cubs lost, but still, great afternoon and a good cap to the spring season for me personally. I went home and picked up the iPJ (the iPMM had driven to "Tulsa" for the day) and we headed to the Biltmore to catch another Friday evening movie classic, The Philadelphia Story. Got some delicious Slice of Sicily pizza - our routine RULES - and we actually skipped MoJo for once. The movie was quite enjoyable, full of repartee and a stellar cast (Cary Grant, Katherine Hepburn, Jimmy Stewart, etc.). Another great evening on the lawn...

Alright, back to the outline:

Saturday - SLUG and a chill day; we ate and ate well at home
Sunday - got up early and crushed a lot of work; more iPChilling; pickup Ulty; hit up Zinburger...

Oh, wait, exit outline. We went to Zinburger, a wine and burger bar adjacent to MoJo. And we were served by one of my bioethics students. More exactly:

Waitress: What will you have?
Nyet: Medium cheeseburger with cheddar and no veggies - basically bun, meat, cheese, bun.
Waitress: Okay. This is a weird question, but do you work at ASU?
Nyet [uh-oh]: Why yes...
W: Are you the bioethics TA?
N: Oh yeah
W: I'm in your class...
N: Hey, right, I didn't recognize you out of context...
W: I got an 80 on the midterm. I stayed up all night. Whatevs. [Walks off]
N: Um, that was above average...

And the jokes flowed. Spit in food was mentioned by more than one person, and is pretty much brought up every time I relay this story. Awesome times. She *did* get a ridiculous tip from the iPJ, so I hope all is right in the universe. Still, I did not enjoy the experience.

Sunday, ctd - followed by MoJo. Ah, all is right in the world, at least.
Monday - Back at school, sadly. Class canceled. Seder w/ the iPFam. Including: matzah ball soup, brisket, and the most ridiculous chocolate covered matzah desert you've ever heard. The iPJ opened the door for Elijah and in walked Wrigley. Who knew? Good meal, even if it was a 30 minute version.
Tuesday - Had to teach very late, and made it home in time to do leftover brisket sandwiches with the iPFam. Beck and I hit up Zinburger for dessert; she had a big as her face slice of pie and I had a ridiculous mint chocolate milkshake.

And the iPFam headed back out on the road on Wednesday. Thus ended Houseguestapalooza. Or did it?

...

Being For the Benefit of Mr. Frank

Just wanted to let you and the readers know that due the inflamed knee, I opted for a quick seven mile bike ride today in lieu of an Ultimate tourney. Felt pretty good; it was city / neighborhood riding, complete with stop signs, crosswalks and all, and I finished in a little over half an hour. Anyways, the bike is still in working order; maybe if I get really adventurous I'll ride it to and from campus this summer. It's only 8.5 miles by riding along the canal, and in a few weeks it'll only be 110 degrees. Hmmmm...

Houseguestapalooza MMX (Part IV)

Alright, things are getting *really* fuzzy now. I lamed out like this last year, and here I go again. My best effort, staying in the reverse order:

Sunday - Beck and I cook brunch for Nyet- and iPFams; we all head to the Angels-Cubs game; steak / salmon back at the homestead
Saturday - Kid Hat Tourney; Nyetfam arrives late; Dinner at Breadfruit; Downtown Public Art
Friday - Breakfast Burritos; Home from school to grade papers; Downtown to look at brass bug sculptures (and saw bolo ties, too); Funny Girl at the Biltmore; Pizza / MoJo mmmm
Thursday - Midterm exam for the kids; Tuck Shop; Art Walk (Where we ran into EBay!)
Wednesday - Honestly, before that, I was still at school and not hanging much other than dinners. This night I had a BSS meeting and came home to chicken and Guinness, which was awesome.
Tuesday - School; Lost; Steak & Swordfish
Monday - Ultimate rained out; sickly feeling; lazy iPMonday; Dinner at Maizi's
Sunday - iPFam arrives late; Beck grills burgers
Saturday - Beck hikes Flatiron while I played disc and cleaned house...

And now we're back into previously blogged territory. Now we'll see if I can do this... flash forward to 2.5 weeks ago Thursday, when the iPFam alit again. What happened during Houseguestapalooza MMX II? Another post, as I grow weary...

Houseguestapalooza MMX (Part III)

Tuesday - after having stayed up very late the night before chatting with Mike NTPB about everything from law school to wedding plans to how I'm going to be the next Chuck Klosterman / Bill Simmons of pop philo writing, I got out of bed early early - I mean, around 2 in the AM, after having gone to bed at 1 - thanks to the throbbing pain in my toes. Seems I didn't tie my shoes tightly enough in Monday night's debacle of a frisbee game, so in addition to suffering the humilation of a lopsided defeat in front of my friends and families, I was suffering the particularly exquisite pain of blood blisters in the beds of my second toes. If you are an Ulty person or have ever otherwise had this misfortune befall you, you know that it's not a tolerable state - the toes just throb incessantly, so sleeping becomes impossible. The only solution is to release the fluid, either with a sterilized needle or a sterilized small cut in the nail. Being the squeamish type and fearing the needle in nailbed impact, I opted for the latter. This carries it's own crappiness, as now your nail is not as anchored and can wiggle around and hurt some more. Suffice it - no sleep that night; I ended up doing the wake up every twenty minutes thing until about 4:30 when I said screw it and got up and continued grading exams.

(Real-time interlude - I just had to chase away two little girls who were climbing our orange tree in the front "yard." Their parent (I presume) was standing in the driveway next door, not ten feet away, watching them climb a tree on someone else's property, doing / saying nothing. And she gave me crap about not letting the girls have fun. WTF people. How about *not* letting your offspring trespass and render me liable for their injuries. Dig?)

The iPFam were still houseguesting (my parents stayed in a hotel around the corner for the first few nights, as thanks to Fred taking up a bedroom, there are only two guestable suites in the Jones household these days) as they would not head for California until Wednesday morning, and they dictated the morning schedule. Their stay was actually something of a blur, because almost every day looked something like this - and actually, this is captured directly from the iPMM's itinerary:

8:00ish - Get out of bed, breakfast, coffee.
9:00ish - Look up from iPhone to notice that it's already 9:00.
9:01 - Declare "Alright, I am going to the gym. Things to do today!"
10:00 - Look up from iPhone briefly to nod to the iPJ as he declares he is "going for a walk."
10:45 - Look up from iPhone to notice that it's already 10:45.
10:46 - Redeclare, "Okay, *now* I am going to the gym."
11:00 - Go to gym.
1:00 - Get back from gym, sometimes with other people's underwear in tow.
1:01 - Declare, "I am going to take a shower so we can do X."
2:30 - Look up from iPhone to notice it's 2:30. Redeclare shower-esque intentions.
3:30 - Put down non-waterproof iPhone to facilitate shower.
4:00 - Shower finished, attack world. With iPhone in hand!

I kid, I kid. A little. But things were quite relaxed, which was great for that Tuesday - we lounged about and got ready, and Dad and Mom came over about 10:30 so Mike, Dad and I could head to a Cubs spring training game in Mesa. In the meantime, Mom, the iPMM and Beck went to Practical Art and kept them afloat in these troubled times, and the iPJ spread the word of Apple as far north as Camelback and 24th, where he ran into the Apple Store and lost track of time. The Cubs game was really, really quick, about 2 hours, so we came back and hung out about the house for a while. I am pretty sure this is the day where the news about the Texas Board of Education dropping Thomas Jefferson from the political philosophy curricula of high school text books (in favor of John Calvin, no less) came out, drawing some offhand "Texas should secede" remarks from the iPJ which in turn drew some "get a rope" commentary from the visiting Texas contingent. Remarkably, Civil War Part Deux did not break out in the Flower House, so we chilled in the living room for the afternoon and, over e-mail across the house, decided to go to Hula for dinner, where a great meal was had by all. Mike regaled us with tales of NYC, we had beers, burgers and ribs, delicious stuff.

We rushed home to catch Lost - really, it was an experiment in seeing if my parents, who had never seen an episode and knew nothing about the show, could track what the hey was happening. They could, more or less, but I don't think they were entirely sold on the show. We said adios (for the time being) to the iPFam as they headed to a Marriott before trekking to CA in the AM. And then, because we had to, we took Mike and my parents to MoJo. They were QUITE sold on that (as was Mike - we may have to start referring to Beck and her efforts to spread the good word as the MoJoJ). Headed home, and despite my best efforts to stay awake and hang with NTPB, I crashed at about 10. Pretty solid accomplishment given the 0 sleep the night before. Oh, and we also moved the Nyetfam into the guest room and got ready for what would happen when a Fred confronted a C-Pap machine (answer: nothing). A good Tuesday.

Monday morning was my first official day of spring break, so I woke up really early to grade. Sorry for the boring theme... Beck headed back to work that day after a pleasant week off hanging with the iPFam. My main mission was to successfully take everyone to lunch AND pick up Mike NTPB from the airport, not an easy task - got everyone over to the house and ready to go by 11 or so. We ate at Sacks, a sandwich place not to far from the homestead, and it was FANTASTIC. Love that place! I bugged out a little early and picked up Mike effectively in stride from the airport; didn't have to stop int he cell phone lot or anything, just pulled up right as he walked out with his bag. BAM! We headed home and hung around the pool for a bit, chatting with Mom and the iPMM about proposals, wedding plans, and trying to predict what accident would occur during this iP-NTPB interaction (nothing much - a knocked over glass of water; no bull-rides or eye infections this time). Mike and I headed to the fields at 5 to throw a bit before the start of the terrible, terrible 3BK game; there was a lot of talk of having Mike play with us, but we decided to stick to the rules. A lot of fun to hang and throw with Mike and have him and the fams at the game, even if it was a travesty of Ultimate.

We, as you will recall, played savage, and I ran my face off, leaving me exhausted after the game. This did not stop everyone from asking me where we should go to dinner - I just remember being so tired I could barely think and people staring at me. We decided on Jerry's for convenience's sake - it's a 24 hour diner close to our house and close to my parents' hotel, so it got the job done (even if I can't say it was the highest quality breakfast fare I've had, it did the salt-replenishing trick after the savagery). Beck got a milkshake that was super tasty, as I recall. We came home, Mike and I stayed up very late talking, and little did I know that my toes were swelling in my shoes all the while...

Friday, April 9, 2010

Houseguestapalooza MMX (Part II)

Oh, my failures are too many to count. Here we are three weeks later, and I haven't written up Houseguestapalooza. I. Suck. The quality of the product has deteriorated substantially, I'm sure, as I can hardly remember who all was here, let alone what we did. But here's the best effort.

Wednesday and Thursday were the Grand Canyon experience. We (my parents and I) drove up on Wednesday and stayed the night at a lodge in the park which is *definitely* the right call if you ask me. The canyon is, as advertised, amazing, though I liken the experience of seeing it the throngs of people to the worst of the worst museum commentary experiences. "The colors; the play of light and shadow!" they exclaimed for the millionth time. I spent the bulk of my viewing time pondering the meaning of the term "reverence" and wondering whether Thoreau and Whitman exclaimed inanities at nature all the time, too.

I'm such a critic. Seriously, though, it was Spring Break, and the people were out in droves and exercising no self-censorship. Letting that go, the views were fantastic, and I got tons of photos (see below). We also had the pleasure of hearing a national parks ranger talk about going into the Canyon off-trail and the different precautions he takes to, you know, avoid death. He told us a great story about a pair of lost hikers and other ones about annoying, food-stealing ravens. Great stuff, and BEST OF ALL, he taught me how to tie my shoes to avoid "canyon toe" (no, that's something different) which hopefully means I'll be breaking my toenails less often. (Two days too late, actually, as I broke them Monday night).

I've spent the last five minutes trying to decide which pictures to post, and it's pretty impossible. So just check out a slideshow and enjoy this pair of enticing shots to whet your appetite with, you know, colors and light and shadow:

DSCF6148 DSCF6189

That first one is from sunset Wednesday; we failed to get up for the Thursday sunrise, so the second is a midmorning shot. Beck insisted that you can't get a feel for it via pictures, and she's of course right. I think you also can't really get a feel for it until you go down into it. Standing on the rim still gives you the vague impression that you're seeing something on TV, and the brown L.A. haze doesn't help matters.

We slept in on Thursday as mentioned; my dad and I grabbed a free, powdered egg style breakfast, and the three of us took a bus tour to catch all the views. In lieu of lunch, we hit the general store on the way out for some road snacks where I spotted this:

DSCF6205

It's pretty low on the universe's list of cosmic coincidences, but Cactus Candy is a shut down shop on a street I drive down in Sunny Azz Phoenix every day - seems at one point they actually did make a product. Who knew? Anyways, lots of good pretzel and light fare treats for the road trip home, and I'd say we did quite a good job eating well for being restricted to highway fare.

After spending the day site-seeing and visiting a couple of artists studios that overhung the rim, we made the drive back home without incident. I had the unfortunate job of grading undergrad exams all spring break (I think I mentioned this earlier), and I spent most of the trip home head down, red-inking. Less than fun. We got back to SA at roughly five and made some turkey burgers for Beck's arrival home from work. Delicious times, and we capped off the day of glorious natural wonders by watching Iron Man, which was entertaining if silly.

On Wednesday morning, I took Mike NTPB back to the airport so he could head on to California. Great visit with the Miguel which I will detail reverse time style in the upcoming posts. Came back to pack and head off to the Grand Canyon, and like I said, probably not going to do it justice with words and pics - we had a good time, though the place was overrun with stereotypical middle class overweight tourists who spouted nonsense with a vengeance. maybe headphones are in order next time...

Alright, TBC with Tuesday in a few.

3BK-8

Wednesday saw the mighty 3BK (this week: Bing...Bing...Bing...KABOOM!) take on FIGJAM, Keith's team. FIGJAM was coming off their first win of the season from the previous week after the highly touted, messianic arrival of Sasquatch aka Dustin Doyle, a 6'9" behemoth who's been spending his days at a residency somewhere in not-Phoenix. FIGJAM was also happy to have Alan in attendance, another draft-flier with a historically bad attendance record. Alas, Keith himself did not show up because he's a huge Kim Novak fan - ugh - so we took on a hamstrung squad with everyone on 3BK in attendance for what felt like the first time in weeks. No wind that day, so things looked ripe for a huckfest, and a huckfest it was. The skinny:

1-0; 1-1; 1-2; 2,3,4,5,6-2; 6-3; 7-3; 7-4; 8-4; 9,10,11,12,13,14,15-4.

Eek - that's right, we pitched a shutout in the second half against a team that had largely given up somewhere around 10-4. A nice step up from last week's second half loss. They were a bit short-handed; Russ and Alan arrived late, and the rest of their men just couldn't stop the hucks. And their women (Mel et al) played well but couldn't match the speed combo of Lindsey, Ashley and Tyler (Beck sat out another week to baby her hammy). Doyle got a D early and had a few nice breakmark throws - his releases are, natch, 20 feet apart, making it hard to stop anything in the break realm - but otherwise did his usual bizarre act of staying back and handling instead of putting his height somewhere usable aka the endzone. I'll never understand that. We scored early, often and fast, almost exclusively on hucks as the bulk of their players were being very aggressive on under cuts and ended up paying the price. The 6:20 game was over by roughly 7:10; we got home in time to watch the Spurs game (or would have if I still had cable). Good to see 3BK clicking a little bit*, though not really that great to have a non-competitive game.

* - A little bit - we've got some guys playing some great D and being impressively aggressive / hustling all over the field, but we still have a whole lot of newbie goofiness about. A vignette - I call Lindsey and Mike at our primary cutters. Lindsey makes an incut, so I'm fully expecting Mike to make the corresponding outcut (or at least start it). His man guards him way under on about stall four, so I have a very easy deep shot to him; all he has to do is start moving. He waits until stall eight to even take a step, at which point I realize I've waited to long to activate the dump (because Mike has been open the last four seconds and just didn't move) , so I fire a big, loopy IO forehand downfield for him and get it off perfectly. It's just out there, thirty, forty yards ahead of him, hanging there and waiting to be caught. Mike gets on his horse and gets there with plenty of time - his defender is nowhere to be seen - and the disc is hanging directly above him. he inexplicably runs past the disc, then realizes it, then runs back and has *another* chance to catch it but runs too far the other way, and it falls to the ground. He misread a perfect throw - TWICE! Ah, well, it happens. But I have a nagging suspicion that it (and plays like it - there were plenty) are going to make or break us, and they're leaning toward break us right now.

I played well, throwing eight goals (FH huck to Ashley x 2, FH huck to Lindsey x 2, FH huck to Nick, FH blade to Lindsey, and casual backhands after catching hucks to Nick and Jeff) and catching four (two up the line BH's from Al, an endzone play flick from Mark, and a sky of everyone on a FH huck from Nick). Had one huck to Lindsey that Al's guy poached on (grrr) and a punt to no one, but otherwise no turns, and I made some D's, even when matched against the Yeti. Again, probably a little too much from me, but the opportunities were all there (and then some). The other three scores were hucks from Al to Lindsey and Nick and a huck from Stefan to Dave - so carry the one, and that's 11 of our 15 goals on hucks or hucks plus flips to the endzone, which at least partially explains the crazy short game length. Barely a workout, really, and hopefully Keith will be back by finals so if we run into them again we'll have a game proper.

And there ends the good news - in the "Nyet is physically incompetent" domain, let's take you back to Tuesday night, Sprawl practice. I left school at about 6 to get to Scottsdale by 6:30 and stopped by the grocery store for an apple on the way. The apple, bracket, "of death," apparently - about twenty minutes after eating it (and ten minutes into my warmup), my throat swelled up, and my uvula grew into a ping pong ball in the back of my throat. WHAT? Yeah - I attribute it to the apple; for all I know it was pesticides at SSC or what have you. Regardless, I couldn't breathe very well and more importantly couldn't talk (awkward for a captain at practice). I drank and drank and drank water, but my throat killed all practice long. I played hard but felt (unsurprisingly) out of breath and ended up having a pretty solidly crappy time. I drove home, and it continued to hurt through the night. By morning it was very sore but no longer swollen, and the whole breathing apparatus got better as the day went on, which was nice. But really, I have no idea what happened. This happened once before (when I came to your door) - the uvula specifically, I mean - in New Mexico over Spring Break (in what, 1998?). Then I attributed it to the dry air, but you would think I'd be used to that kind of thing by now. No clue.

Happy to be able to breathe again, I finished up my started-at-5:30 work and drove to school. On my walk to my office, I noticed my left knee clicking a bit. Nothing big or horribly unusual; I get weird sounds now and then. But nothing had happened knee-wise the night before; all the drama had been in my pharynx. It was a little weird. So I iced it during office hours for the morning and then tried a little light frisbee at lunch to make sure it was playable, and it was, didn't bother me in the slightest, just made a clicking sound.

Fast forward to post 3BK rout - I took off my knee brace, and VROOP! (Sorry, but there is no language in our lungs for such a physiological phenomenon). Knee goes from human-style to softball in a blink. Drove home, and it progressed to men's softball. Ice, ice, ibuprofen (buh-duh-ddduh, ddduh, Vanilla) in the night and the morning, but after my walk to my office the next AM, it progressed to GRAPEFRUIT LEAGUE. So since then, the sweet tunes of Robert Van Winkle have been dotting my brain as I do nothing but ice and elevate and try to get this thing back down. There's no way I'm going to be able to play in the ASU intramural tourney I was supposed to play in this weekend*, and with the last league game, Sprawl practices, league playoffs, and Uoma Donna (and Genevieve flying in!) all coming in the next few weeks, this was a bad time for something to go wonky. And Daweena in Utah in about a month taboot. UGH.

* - Which is probably for the better, as I'm guessing we could have easily tooled on the non-club Ultimate players on campus, and there's always the chance that a juiced up frat boy would have ended me for spiking it on him. Ah, well.

I mean, knees aren't supposed to bleed! I mean, sure, MY knees are routinely swollen. But this is a bit over the top, and I'm a bit worried that whatever meniscal nastiness that has been giving me trouble over the past two months finally gave way. It doesn't really hurt, though, other than the discomfort from the joint not articulating correctly. I guess what I'm saying is that it could be bad, could not, and it's just frustrating - here I am, light as ever, in great shape, doing all the right stuff, stretching and icing and lifting weights and doing plyos and yeah, shape of my life, and random uvula and joint spaces just don't care. Color me a serious man, I suppose, but this is BS; I'm not doing anything wrong and am taking all precautions and I'm still staring down a trip to Tucson next weekend where I'll just be sitting on the effing sidelines. DAMMIT. And I get in this solid of shape, only to see it melt away due to an injury in the month before Daweena? WTFTTM?!?!?!?!!!!?

Alright, end rant. I'm just tired of it is all. Hopefully the weekend off will do me some good. It is frustrating in the body maintenance domain* - but I'll get over it and hopefully be good to go, at least by next Tuesday / Wednesday. If it's still bugging me after the weekend, I'll make an appt. with the sports doc. Sigh...

* - I'm consistently weighing in the 166-170 range at the gym after workouts, which was pretty much my original goal, so I'm trying to recalibrate my eating habits to stay at this weight. So when a game turns out to be half a workout, it throws my calorie calculations all out of wack, and when there's the sudden potential to not be able to do any real cardio workouts for the next week or so, the OCD in me gets activated. My basal metabolic rate is ~2300, depending on which website I use, so I've been gunning for that plus some extra calories to account for workouts. But I continue to have no clue how much an Ultimate game *really* burns, not to mention I am now mired in the habit of not eating as much (with the possible exception of Friday night pizza / mojo fests), so I have to be careful not to start losing muscle mass. Speaking of, up to benching 205 on the machines at school, which has no translation to real world weight, but it's more than I could do, so... yay. Anyhoo, yeah, Nyet the Lesser indeed. Sorry to be discussing the weight loss so much; I know it's a sensitive topic for some peeps, and it's easier for some than others. I will say, though, that I've worked pretty hard on it, with lots of hour-long sessions on the elliptical, lots of thumb muscle work pushing plates away, so forgive me for being a little pissed that the universe is rewarding me with genu-citrus. I would rather not have this be the undoing.

Getting back to the point - 3BK is 5-3 (5-1 in division) with a +24 point differential, good for third place for the time being. That's a guaranteed above-.500 record for the regular season, and eyeballing the standings and remaining games, it looks like we'll lock up the 3 seed with a win next week and fall as low as 5 with a loss (though the 4/5 seed distinction is meaningless). That game next week is against Tom "8th Round" The, Pat, Jose, Jim, Lexi et al, the Black Smoke Monster, and knee-permitting I aim to take it to them. It would be good to grab a 3 seed and get one of our pool's three lesser teams; also, being 4 or 5 means playing the other side's 1, which is looking to be Griesy and Big Nate's squad - obviously you gotta beat everybody, but it'd be an easier path to the semis to face the 2 and 7 from the other side instead. So wish us luck. And maybe all that means is wish me better knee.

Thursday, April 8, 2010

What they are watching... Episode VI

Our look at what the teens and tweens of America are watching. You may have caught our first couple of episodes. This clip is a little cheesier than most...




The American Mall is a musical produced by the same folks that produced Disney's smash hit High School Musical. The American Mall did not get rave reviews or high ratings on the first go round. However, it appears to be picking up a modest amount of steam on You Tube.

Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Stopgap / Happy Baseball!

I will get around to posting the fun GPGDS trip, the rest of the spring break, and the 100 album reviews I owe. In the meantime, welcome back to the baseball season - I got to watch the Cubs in the lab yesterday while I graded papers, which was awesome, but they got killed, which was sub-awesome. So it goes.

Of course, other Chicago plays were a lot more impressive...